Kursheed Ahmad

Khursheed Ahmad’s practice germinates from a plethora of creative vistas to form an organic melange of several cross-dimensional mediums, including performance, text, sound, drawing, found objects and photography. The opportunity to work across and between such mediums has enabled him to test the interactions between space, body, and languages. In his practice, the witnessing body evokes the subtlest of differences that exist in a given space(s), wherein language acts as a site of multiple unique contingencies and the  witness-subject navigates their  awareness via different channels of no-thought and no-action. His experience as a visual and performance artist focuses on co-learning that explores the kinetics of behaviour, to lead his participants through unexplored terrains of social, personal, and spiritual expression. 

Khursheed Ahmad’s residency project takes the form of a workshop that seeks to explore the means of articulating ‘resistance’. The intention is to create a discursive sphere where both students and artists, coming from different academic, social and practice backgrounds explore the possibilities of finding a common language of protest through various means of creative and academic expressions.Not intended to be goal oriented and not seek a finitude, this workshop rather positions itself as an ongoing process of enquiry, questioning, discussion, deliberation and performance. The aim is also of a community formation where friends can share experiences, angst, knowledge, practice and further propositions. 

Alongside these workshops, Ahamad intends to bring together historical materials that emanate a sense of belongingness. He is interested in the interface in-between perpetual conflict, where multiple means to action generate images and texts to evoke dialogues that challenge the notion of stability and continuity.

Biography

Khursheed Ahmad lives and works between the Indian-occupied Kashmir and the city of Delhi, India. He was born into a family of folk artists called ‘Bhand’ in Kashmir, who over the centuries have played different roles in public theatrical spaces. He obtained a bachelor's degree in painting from Kashmir University and a master's degree in Visual Arts from Ambedkar University Delhi in 2018. He was Artist in Residency at Serendipity Arts Foundation India "Dharti'' in 2019 and at the Tifa India supported by Inlaks Foundation India in 2018; Ahmad has facilitated several performative art workshops and protests throughout India, notably in Srinagar and Delhi, and was the recipient of the Inlaks Foundation Fine Arts Award in 2018.  Ahmad is set to complete his first international residency at Fonderie Darling in Montreal. 

Recent exhibitions

2022	The Clown of Yach-e-gham, performance, Khoj Studios, Dehli, IN
2019	Performance, Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, IN.
2018	The Moment of Noon Tueth, performance art event, Srinagar, IN. Articulating Resistance, performance, Ambedkar University Delhi, IN
2017	FICA, group show, C13, Delhi, IN